Spanish beer? What do I think about Spanish beer? I think I've not tried very much of it! Luckily for me BASCO got in touch with me this week asking if I'd like to try some Spanish beer and snacks - sounds like a great idea! Not only did they send a couple of bottle of La Virgen Jamonera but also a lovely looking pack of Serrano ham!

* means that this bottle has been cellared/aged and is not indicative of what it would be like if drunk fresh.

I had this bottle hanging around since 2010, the Best Before Date was November 2011 so at the time of the review this beer was over five years old. Not quite sure why I'd not baron rated it sooner, think I was expecting it to be horrid. Maybe a fresh bottle of it is not that great but this aged one was really something special.

I met Paul from Hillside Brewery back in May when judging at the SIBA Wales and West beer competition. He was showing us pictures of their barn conversion which looked like it was going to be an excellent bar, function area and a great addition to the brewery.

A month ago a box of Hillside samples showed up, here are the details:

A couple of months ago I was invited by drink and food PR firm R&R Teamwork to join them down in London for a Duvel evening where you could try six of the previous Tripel Hop limited edition beers. Duvel Tripel Hop is a wonderful beer (in all it's versions) but London is just a bit too far from Ormskirk for an evening of drinking. I did suggest that if they wanted to send me the six beers then that would be great but it was more of a tongue-in-cheek comment rather than actually expecting to receive them...

I'd normally explain what each beer in the pack is and what the bottle label says about it but in this case the only difference on the label is the number on the front. I can tell you that they are brewed to the recipes used over the past few years for the Tripel Hop specials. Each one is regular Duvel brewed with an additional hop, these are: Amarillo, Citra, Sorachi Ace, Mosaic, Equninox & HBC291.

Look out for 'baron ratings' of these beers soon, and a big thank you to Emanuele from R&R Teamwork for sending these through to me!